The Princess and the Pebble
by Juxtaposie
Summary: Drabbles involving Zuko and Toph. Some will be romantically inclined, some won't, pairings will vary, people may reproduce, kill eachother, die, eat eggs: it could get really wild. All will have one thing in common two, actually: Zuko and Toph.
1. Pebble

**Pebble**

_Because Zuko likes to talk trash, and Toph sure as hell isn't gonna take it lying down!_

* * *

Zuko groaned as an impossibly tiny knee dug itself into the small of his back. He was vaguely aware, somewhere between the ache in his chest and the burning in his right arm, of the hand fisted in the collar of his tunic. If he turned his head just the tiniest bit, he knew he would see the waterbender, with one of those trying-not-to-choke smiles on her face. He could hear her idiot brother laughing like a maniac. 

The ground did not taste too good.

"What did you call me, Princess?" an angry voice demanded. If Zuko's brain had been functioning properly, he would have remembered the insult he had given that had landed him laid out flat in front of his uncle, two peasants, and the Avatar (who was snickering behind his hand). The voice seemed to know he couldn't come up with an answer, and the hand attached to it proceeded to rub his face into the dirt.

The knee lifted, and the earth shifted under him, rolling him over to face the sky. A head appeared: that young blind girl, the one who would be helpless against a firebender…

Oh. Right.

"The next time you wanna call me helpless," Toph spat angrily, "remember what dirt tastes like!"

Then she dropped a pebble on his forehead and stalked off.

* * *

AN: Ah, sweet beginnings. This will be a place for me to post any and all drabbles involving interaction between Zuko and Toph. Because, let's face it, watching them is gonna be hilarious. Some will be Zuko/Toph (Zoph? Tuko?), some won't. This one wasn't. 


	2. Lost and Found

**Lost and Found**

_He had only looked away for a moment... where was Toph?_

* * *

He had only looked away for a moment – barely a heartbeat – and he'd lost her in the teeming chaos their organized battle had become. The Fire Nation soldiers had to have known they were beaten, surely. They were fighting for their lives now, a cause they held infinitely dearer than their own country. 

But where was Toph…

"Watch her, Zuko," Katara had whispered against his ear when she'd hugged him for the last time (much to the young Avatar's annoyance). "She's at a disadvantage with all these firebenders, and I won't be able to keep an eye on her if I go with Aang. I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to –"

"I'll watch her," Zuko had replied roughly, shoving Katara away like a small child escaping an affectionate mother. She'd been getting emotional, and the last thing he'd wanted was a young woman leaking on his shoulder.

So he'd watched the blind earthbender - though 'watched' was a very loose term. Toph seemed to be doing all right; more than all right, really. She was taking down more soldiers than the other earthbenders – the ones who had been studying for years before her father had ever married her mother.

He had never really seen her fight; he had been beside her in numerous confrontations, but he had never paid attention to exactly how well she did. Her abilities were almost frightening, bordering on supernatural.

So he'd looked away for a heartbeat and he'd lost her in the flow of bodies and earth and fire.

And when the battle was over, and the soldiers defeated - though Ozai's fate was still unknown – he still couldn't find her.

Zuko searched now, desperately, turning over bodies, wading through wreckage, looking for any trace of the tiny girl-child with whose care and keeping he had been charged. He had not seen her in almost an hour.

He didn't even dare think of what would happen if Toph was dead when he found her – because he _was_ going to find her, no matter how long he had to search. His uncle would probably never speak to him again; Toph had a soft spot for Iroh, and he absolutely adored her in return. Sokka and Katara would save him the trouble of feeling guilty by ending his life in what was sure to be a very swift and violent manner. Even the all-knowing, all-forgiving Avatar would probably curse his existence.

He would find her.

There were _so many bodies_. The city was painted red and green with their uniforms: Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation alike lay dead where they had fallen. The smell of charred flesh and burning hair clung to the dust in the air and worked its way into the back of Zuko's nose, until he couldn't remember ever smelling anything else. Eventually he had to cover his nose to keep from gagging.

He nudged over another dead firebender, and his heart began to race when he saw what was caught between the man's stiff, grasping fingers. It was a hair band, yellow and green, with two round, puffy little animal tails right above where the ears would be. He'd always thought Toph had looked rather like a mouse with her headband on.

He wrenched the band from the dead man's hold, shoved it in his pocket, and began his search with renewed vigor. She was close.

He found her half-pinned beneath the body of an Earth Kingdom soldier, who had obviously taken a killing blow meant for the young girl. As Zuko knelt and rolled the man away he made a mental note of face and rank so that he could ensure the man received a proper burial for his deed.

Toph was lying on her side, one arm pinned awkwardly under her body. He rolled her onto her back with gentle hands, letting out a breath he hadn't even known he was holding when she began to mumble.

A quick glance told him enough about her injuries to know she was well enough to be moved. There was a thin, snaking burn climbing across her left shoulder and up onto her right cheek. The arm that had been pinned beneath her body had been knocked out of place at the shoulder, but it wasn't broken and for that he was grateful. Both of her palms were dirty, bloody messes of scrapes and burns.

She opened her eyes when he picked her up, and all of her long, black hair tumbled free, falling over his arm as he held her.

"Did we win?" she asked blearily, barely able to stay conscious at this point.

"Yeah, little sister," Zuko answered, surprising both of them with the affection in his voice, the fondness in the pet name. "Yeah. We won. It's over."

Even concussed as she was, Toph was able to give him a triumphant, fleeting smirk before closing her eyes and turning her face into his shoulder.

"Wake me up when you find Aang and Katara," she muttered, breath warm against his chest.

He didn't reply, because she was already asleep, and began to pick his way back through the destruction and carnage that stood between him and his new life, for better or for worse: the palace, the Avatar, and his father's fate.

At least this small piece of it was safe. He held her tighter, and sent up a small prayer of thanks to whoever had been watching her when he had turned away.

* * *

AN: No one laugh, as I am very proud of this. Let me explain my mind. In MY version of the final battle, only Aang will actually make it to the throne room where Ozai awaits. Katara and Sokka will be left outside in the hallway to stop any gaurds that might come by. Toph will stay outside the palace gates, where there is still Earth for her to bend. Zuko will stay with her, becuase he has no wish to see his father win OR lose. They take the city with a huge army of amassed Water Tribesmen and Earth Kingdom soldiers, a la Mordor at Helm's Deep... except they don't get beaten back. So there it is, for anyone who's ever wondered how I see it. ALL my post-war fanfics are written on this theory of events. Anywho. Not really romantic, but cute I think. I dunno how IC it is, but I suppose the reviews will tell me... 


	3. Storyteller

** Storyteller**

_Zuko makes a vain attempt to connect. Toph makes fun of him. _**  
**

xxxxx

It wasn't often that Zuko slept inside the circle of light their tiny fire provided. He didn't like the feelings of familiarity such an act usually brought about. These were people he was supposed to hate; people who were supposed to be his enemies: two members of one of the decimated Water Tribes, and an Earth Kingdom girl whose country was currently being invaded by his own. Sleeping amongst them, sound as a baby, was the one the one person he should have been stopping at nothing to destroy. 

Instead, he was leading them into his homeland to help them usurp and probably kill his father.

_Enemies and traitors, working together…_ Just like Azula had said.

The stars gave him comfort. They always had. There was something in their ordered timelessness that calmed him; something in the way they kept their silent watch, ever the same from season to season, in an endless cycle, that lent him a bit a long-forgotten peace. You couldn't see them so well in the firelight, and they were better companions than his current acquaintances anyhow.

The grass was soft, if a bit wet. The day had been hot, but the night was cooling quickly and was almost bearable without boots and tunic. There was a breeze, but the wind was too warm to lend any real relief. Sleep was not coming easy.

A bit of movement by the fire caught his eye, and Zuko was almost certain he had heard thunder – but then again, he hadn't really heard it: he had felt it.

A small body, the smallest in their group, stood up on shaking, sleepy legs and stumbled the twenty yards to Zuko's side, where she sat down heavily in the grass and yawned.

"It's not your watch yet," Zuko said lowly, sitting up and glancing at Toph as she continued to yawn and rubbed the sleep from her unseeing eyes.

"I know that," she responded slowly.

"You should try to sleep."

Her brows drew down – it seemed she liked being told what to do about as much as he did, and took it about half as well – and she muttered a quick, "shut up," before yawning again and stretching her arms above her head.

"I can't sleep," she volunteered, when the silence had grown uncomfortable.

"You were _just_ sleeping," Zuko countered irately, annoyed that his self-imposed solitary confinement had been invaded.

"Well, I'm awake now," she responded tartly, "and I can't get back to sleep."

Zuko sighed, and shot her a dirty look. He suddenly remembered why he wasn't fond of either girls or children.

"You haven't even _tried_."

She looked up at him with her filmy eyes – odd, because she seemed to be looking at something deeper than his face – and asked easily, "Didn't I tell you to shut up?"

Zuko, in an uncharacteristically mature gesture, decided the fight wasn't worth picking. With only minimal grumbling, he laid back and returned his gaze to the stars.

Another silence stretched on, broken only by the humming of the night insects and Toph's toes digging in the grass. From the corner of his eye, Zuko watched as she turned her head from side to side with very slow, deliberate motions. She continued this strange act for a few long moments, her toes still buried in the dirt beneath the grass, and Zuko suddenly realized she was using her ears and he used his eyes – that she turned her head to listen to something he would have looked at. He wondered if the wind in the trees made the spidery branches any clearer to her.

"What are you looking at?" she asked suddenly, her tone one of harmless curiosity.

For a moment, he feared she had somehow known he was watching her, but then realized there was no possible way she could have discovered such a thing.

"You keep… tilting your chin at something," she continued. "I was just… well, there's nothing moving around out here, so what are you watching?"

He sat up again, and sent the girl a searching look. Toph wasn't usually quite so nosy. He wondered, fleetingly, if she was trying to get her mind off of something unpleasant.

"The stars," he finally answered, and the frown that came to her face was so tiny it was barely noticeable.

She shrugged when she realized what she had given away, and flopped backwards to lie beside him. After a few tense moments spent with her face turned towards to sky, she looked at him and said, "For some reason, I'm not really enjoying this."

"They're beautiful," Zuko explained in their defense. "And peaceful. Like tiny points of light. If you draw lines, they even make pictures."

"Pictures," Toph murmured dryly, nodding. "Yeah, I totally get why you're so entranced. Who'd have thought? Pictures..."

"You asked," Zuko responded in clipped tones.

Toph snickered, and said, "You're the one who got all defensive. They're just stars. How interesting could little points of light be, anyways?"

"They're more than little points of light," Zuko retorted. "They're stars! They've got lives, and history. They've got stories."

"Any good ones?" she asked when it seemed he was done.

"Mostly love stories," he said with a shrug. "Adultery, deception, unrequited affections and the like."

She made a sour face that melted into a smile that was just the tiniest bit too innocent, and said, "Tell me one."

Zuko's witty reply, which was supposed to deny her request and shoo her away, came out sounding something like a cross between a clearing throat and a word that rhymed with "ugh."

He coughed, she smirked, and he began.

"Off to the North – you can just see them coming up over the trees now – there's a group of stars in the shape of a handled cup."

"Like a dipper?" Toph interrupted, head turning north, though how she had known the direction he couldn't have ventured a guess.

"Yes," he continued, "like a dipper. Cups represent wisdom, so these seven stars are called the Sages. There's a single star just below them, another slightly to the left, and way off to the West," her head turned, "there's a group of six stars called the Sisters. A long time ago, there were seven sages, and each was married to one of the beautiful sisters."

"I thought there were only six sisters," she interrupted again.

Zuko ignored her, and pressed on.

"One night, the sages sent up a great offering to Agni, and the Lord of Fire was so pleased that he wanted to honor the sages by gracing them with his presence, but while he was in their midst he caught sight of their seven beautiful wives and vowed to claim each as his own."

Toph snorted, but Zuko plowed on. Iroh had shared this story with him on a dark night many years ago, and though Zuko would never admit it aloud, there wasn't much his uncle said that he had ever forgotten.

"Now living off to the West there was a sorceress who had fallen in love with the Fire God, and when she knew he desired the sisters she called to them. The younger sisters were weak, and answered, but the oldest couldn't be swayed to leave her husband's side. So the sorceress stole the faces of the six sisters, and went to the Fire Lord. Believing he had charmed the younger sisters, and counting them as more than enough even without their oldest sibling, he quickly took them into his bed."

He stopped, and glanced at her, wondering if girls her age usually knew what such euphemisms meant. The pause caught her attention, and she shifted a little, pulling her knees up against her chest and laying her arms across them.

"Why'd you stop?" she asked, resting her chin on her folded arms.

Suddenly Zuko felt very uncomfortable. He searched for a way out of the tiny corner he had backed himself into, but could find none – he knew she wouldn't let the pause pass, and he wasn't about to explain.

"I was just wondering if… if you were able to follow… did your mom ever- what I mean is…"

When he had left four consecutive sentences unfinished, he decided a new tactic was needed and began again with, "Out in the eastern sky, there's a group of stars that makes a picture of –"

"Wait a minute!" Toph protested so loudly that Zuko hushed her. The last thing he wanted was a lecture from Katara about why sex was inappropriate subject matter for a twelve year-old girl. He'd had a lecture the other day about swearing.

"What about Agni and the sorceress?" she pressed, leaning forward. "What happened to the sisters?"

A way to finish the story came to Zuko, and it was so simple that he could have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner.

"The Fire Lord married the sisters," he said stiffly. "And from the six of them he fathered a child. Rumors spread that the sisters had been unfaithful to their husbands, so they fled their marriages. That's why there's one star left by the Sages."

After a pause, Zuko concluded, "The end."

"Hmm," Toph mused, leaning back on her hands. "You know, that story really lost steam near the end. Probably because of that part where you _didn't say anything_. You're an awful story teller, in case no one's told you."

Zuko grumbled, and then sat up again and asked, "_Now_ can you go back to bed?"

Toph nodded, and lay back in the grass.

"Can you go to sleep _by the fire_?" Zuko asked, when she hadn't moved for some time.

She shook her head, and closed her eyes. Then she said, "Sokka snores."

And that was the end of it.

Zuko made a small noise of understanding, a slight intake of breath through the nose, and stretched out on his back, arms pillowing his head.

When he was awakened a few hours later, it was not by the sun's rays burning through his eyelids, but to Katara's annoyed tone, asking if she could have a word with him away from the others. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and glanced around to the campfire, where Toph sat finishing her breakfast. She shot him a sunny smile - though how she could tell her was looking was beyond him - and then gave him a thumb's up.

Zuko groaned.

xxxxx

AN: So this made me laugh. It's rather plain, but I enjoyed writing it so hopefully everyone else will enjoy reading it. I think I'm having trouble getting Zuko down in writing. How'm I doing, folks?


	4. Guilty

**Guilty**

_Toph felt guilty. He needed to feel guilty too. _

**WANRING: MATURE CONTENT (yes, that means sex)**

* * *

Somewhere between the door and the bed, Zuko wondered how he was going to rationalize this in the morning. There was no alcohol involved, no strange drug, no money or favors exchanging hands. She was not a member of his court. He was not a family friend. They hadn't been put up to it by goading peers, prodding parents, or the whispered rumors that had been flying ever since he had been seen exiting her room – alone – late one night by a gossipy maid.

She was small – she'd always been small – but there was enough power in those tiny hands to pull off his thick armor and push him back onto the bed. The strength in her thin shoulders and skinny legs kept him pinned when she straddled him and reached for the ties on his robes, tearing them open.

A hand behind her head brought him back into control, pulled her down into a hot, dominating kiss that left them both breathless. She struggled when he sat up, hooked a hand behind her knee, and flipped her onto the bed. Deft hands pushed her dress up over her scarred knees, past white thighs and whiter hips, to fumble briefly with smallclothes until she was stripped from the waist down.

Then he was on her, weighing her down, pressing her back into the mattress, and she couldn't think of a single thing she wanted more than to be crushed beneath him. She told him so; with sharp kisses, and sharper cries, she begged him to breathe deeper and hold longer; she needed him just as much – maybe more – as he needed the release.

But in that small eternity where everything vanished – in that single instant when he was all she could taste and touch – it wasn't his face in her mind's eye, or his name spilling from her lips.

And when he'd finished and rolled away from her, Toph felt guilty.

He needed to feel guilty too.

"So," she asked breathlessly, closing her useless eyes as that pathetic, petty, familiar emotion crawled up from her shaking knees, past her belly, to settle like a lead weight in her heaving chest. "How's your wife?"

* * *

AN: ... 


	5. Rumor Has It

**Rumor Has It**

_People say the strangest things..._

* * *

"You eat babies," Toph began, circling him warily, hands poised in that strange, mantis-like stance she favored so heavily.

Zuko snorted, and another tiny flame streaked across the ground, curling in the vegetation around Toph's feet. She wasn't taking the bait, as per usual.

"Really," she insisted, that small, ever-present smirk fixed firmly on her face. "They say you don't have any heirs because you keep eating them. Something about prolonging your own life through the ingestion of the innocent blood of your family."

Zuko snorted again, and asked, "They don't think my wife might have a problem with me eating our children?"

"Nope," Toph replied, coming to a standstill and shifting her feet, rooting herself in place. "She's too busy drinking the blood of beautiful slaughtered virgins."

When Zuko paused to laugh, she struck. The ground fell out from beneath him, but he was too quick to get caught in that trap. Still, all that shaking ruined his leap, forcing him to duck and roll. He covered more distance than he'd expected, and came up close beside her. He didn't usually employ hand-to-hand techniques, but he'd always needed more than firebending to best Toph. His leg swept out, meant to break her stance, but she back-pedaled hastily and just barely avoided ending up flat on her back.

"You're not really blind," he offered as she shifted her bare feet on her new patch of ground.

She laughed a little – the smallest rush of air through her nasal passages, the tiniest wavering of her vocal chords – and a shaft of sharp rock shot up from the ground, aimed squarely at the soft underside of Zuko's chin. It was little effort to roll backwards, and onto his feet. He didn't plan on losing any teeth today.

She kicked a rock at him, and said, "You can't really bend lightning."

That one stung a little, because it was so dangerously close to the truth. No matter how much he meditated and practiced and fought and bled it never came easy to him. It never had, and he was finally beginning to realize it never would.

Still, dwelling on it would do him no good.

He countered with four quick, successive punches, each producing a thin, hot blast of red flame. The first flew just past her right ear – Zuko could smell, very faintly, the stench of burning hair – and all the rest burnt themselves out on the shell of rock called up to defend its mistress. While she hid, he shouted, "You're not a Bei Fong."

"Like that's such a stretch," he heard her shout back before her tiny fortress suddenly rolled towards him. He barely managed the hand vault that carried him over it. Thank Agni she was so still so short.

"No, really," he pressed, dodging all her little pitfalls and coming in close enough to tap her on the shoulder. She was going easy on him today. "They say the Bei Fongs found you wandering around in the mountains, and that they took you in because they'd just lost their real daughter. You were raised by badgermoles, apparently."

Toph laughed outright at this, then quipped, "Stop touching me, Princess!" and Zuko found that the wrist of his hand, still resting on her shoulder, was caught in a vice between two small pinnacles of rock. Planting one foot against each column and pulling as hard as he could, he managed to free himself by the time Toph had stopped laughing.

"You're really Azula in disguise," she said, when she could finally talk again, only to send herself back into a fit of laughter. Of course, that didn't stop her from trying to knock his vital organs out of his chest.

"How is that supposed to work?" Zuko demanded, more than a little irked that she was finding the rumor so amusing.

"I don't know!" she said between laughing, and pulling a sizeable boulder out of his lawn. "_I_ don't think you're Azula."

Zuko rolled his eyes – though he knew the gesture was completely lost on Toph – and then she said, "Your sister had much better technique. She'd never stand all knock-kneed and gimpy-legged like you do all the time."

"Gimpy?!"

"And her voice never squeaked."

"I don't sque-"

"And she wasn't whiny."

"You're in love with Iroh."

Toph nearly tripped over her own feet on that one, and then spent the next few minutes laughing uncontrollably. She was practically rolling around on the ground when she choked out, "You k-keep Ty Lee as a sex slave!"

While Zuko sputtered, Toph continued, "She's not really Mai's friend! You just won't let her leave!" Any subsequent comments were swallowed by the ensuing gales of laughter.

"Please," Zuko finally managed, despite the color in his cheeks. "As far as the Fire Nation nobles are concerned, you're entire house is filled with impressionable young men – and women!- of questionable age, who attend to your _every_ need twenty-four hours a day!"

Toph began to nod her head, still wiping at her steaming eyes. "Yeah," she said with a chuckle, "that sounds like home. You're in love with Aang."

Zuko couldn't help the squawk of dismay (Fire Lords did not squawk) that jumped out of his throat as he narrowly avoided being smashed into the far wall by Toph's boulder, thrown in the instant he'd paused to process the hideous, terrible lie that had come out of her mouth.

"Who said that?!" he demanded, retaliating with a sudden burst of flame that sprang from his open palm to fly across her face just inches from her unseeing eyes. "I'll have them killed!"

"Those aren't the rules," Toph chided gently, even as a ground twisted and opened beneath him. A lesser man would have broken his leg in those rifts. "And it wouldn't do you any good anyways. You can't kill your entire court."

"Watch me!" Zuko snarled, leaping at her with all the speed and accuracy of an enraged saber-toothed moose lion.

Unfortunately, at that exact moment a fist-sized rock caught him in the gut and the sudden vacuum in his lungs was enough in and of itself to stop his charge. The second rock caught him square in the chest, just below his collarbone, and he toppled backwards to land in an undignified heap on the uneven ground.

Toph sidled up to his prone form, and used her toe – her freezing, filthy, callused toe – to poke him in the cheek.

"Don't worry," she soothed, squatting down to pat the same cheek she had poked. "I'll keep your dirty secret."

Zuko just turned his head into the grass, and tried in vain to shoo the little earthbender away. Toph, as usual, refused to be shooed, and left him buried up to his neck in loam and pebbles. He couldn't find the strength to dig himself out.

* * *

AN: Omigod, this story is alive! I give all the credit to Artemis Rae, who pushed and pulled and begged and pleaded and wheedled and bribed and threatened and whined until I got this chapter done, cause she just loved it that much. Hopefully it stand up to the previous chapters well. 


End file.
